


First Line Prompts

by settledownfrohike



Category: The X-Files
Genre: First Lines Challenge, One Word Prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9389897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/settledownfrohike/pseuds/settledownfrohike
Summary: One word prompt: Desert (supposed to be) 5 sentences. Brevity and all that. Pretty much immediately post ep.





	1. Chapter 1

Suddenly, he stands, almost formally, and loosens the top button of his shirt, adjusts his tie. He gives the space in front of him a careful once over, obviously preparing for scathing trademark Mulder monologue, and she’s thinking: here it comes. It’s not violent, but thorough, his sweeping motion. 'FOX MULDER' the desk plate is spinning out of control and crashing against the wall. She watches wide-eyed as it slides and settles to the thin carpeting on the office floor. 

The desk top is now as bare and flat as the desert. 

“YOU WANT A GODDAMN DESK?! ....HERE!!” 

He looks at her for what was most likely a second but feels like eons, gold flecks blazing hot in those chameleon eyes. And then they lower slowly to the floor and he seems less steadfast on his feet. He sways, like a man not-quite-drunk. 

The door does not slam behind him. 

She does not follow.


	2. Prompt: "What's wrong, Frohike, you look like you just saw a ghost."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Send me the first line of a fic and I’ll write the next five lines!

“Self imposed exile has its drawbacks, amigo. Forgot a mirror, a minor oversight.”

“Speak for yourself.” Byers shoulders him to the side and tries in vain to smooth the bedraggled, scissor chopped mass of fur hiding his face, alternately patting and pulling with barely contained disgust.

Langly eyes them both between mouthfuls of pizza, guarding his first non-freeze-dried meal in 32 months with predatory possessiveness.


	3. She can't bring herself to look at him.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Send me the first line of a fic and I’ll write the next five lines!

She can't bring herself to look at him.

….because she knows he’ll hate the answer. A fitful, heavy-breathing nightmare has him probing and she knows he’ll never let up. She can’t bring herself to roll over, so she makes a wall of herself, ramrod straight down to her toes and lets the tears and mucus slide hotly down her face and onto the bed, keeping her eyes focused on the dirty egg-shell motel wall, fists curled sweatily into her belly effectively denying herself the luxury of reaching for a man who is well and truly here, really here because it’s all ok now.

“I’d just buried you, and I was digging into your grave.”

“ You were...trying to get me out?”

“No. I wanted to get in.”


	4. "Is this seat taken?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Send me the first line of a fic and I’ll write the next five lines!

"Is this seat taken?"

He’s seated, of all places, the hospital chapel.

Not for solace, there is nowhere on earth for that.

He’d come here to rail against a god he doesn’t believe in, challenge his validity face to face.

But instead he finds himself a willing sacrifice, forehead upon clasped hands, praying to be struck down in her stead.

Fresh from weeping at her bedside, the gaze he casts upward at Maggie is swollen and inflamed with grief. He dare not speak lest the offering of a maternal comfort open the floodgates once more. She spares him any sort of pity, instead clasping his left hand between both of hers, the brush of her thumb over his ring finger anything but subtle.

Her face is cast upward towards Mary, and her eyes are closed.


	5. "I feel like I need to apologize."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Write a 5 line fic, using a prompt is the 1st line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct continuation of the previous chapter.

"I feel like I need to apologize."

“…for my son.” He’s too tired to feign ignorance, sorry-son-of-a-bitch that he is, but he does at least attempt at a weak shake of the head and a whispered, “No Mrs. Scully.” She smiles ruefully, and starts speaking to no one in particular, “My mother always hated Bill. She never wanted the Navy life for me… ‘gypsies’ she called them, but I loved him,” her voice has taken on a stronger, richer tone now, and then turns wistful, “I would’ve followed him anywhere. Dana has always assumed her tenacity came from her father,” she’s nodding as she says this, in the way that mothers do when they know better, “but she is her mother’s daughter.” He doesn’t know where she’s going with this or why she’s chosen to address it now, and maybe she doesn’t either, but when she affixes that familiar azure gaze at him and says that she believes that their devotion to one another, whatever it is, has brought her daughter back from the brink once before, and she has faith that it can again, it’s the closest thing to hope he’s felt in a while.


	6. "I can't believe you did that in front of her"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Send me the first line of a fic and I’ll write the next five lines!

"I can't believe you did that in front of her"

 

“I didn’t do anything Scully, at least not on purpose, and she didn’t see anything anyway.”

“You answered the door in your boxers, you know that’s risky.” 

“I thought it was the delivery guy!”

“I’ve been telling you for years your boxers need a button fly,” and her smirk tells him she’s not mad, not really,”you tend to ignore the breeze when you’re groggy.” 

“You never seemed to mind before,” he leers, “oh yea Scully, I caught ya lookin.”


	7. Prompt: "I get that he's your friend Scully but all I'm saying is that I'm supposed to be your best friend and you never kiss me like that."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Send me the first line of a fic and I’ll write the next five lines!

"I get that he's your friend Scully, but all I'm saying is that I'm supposed to be your _best friend_ and you never kiss me like that."

Because she was hysterical, manic even. Immediately she’s regretting including that excerpt from _The Story of Skinner’s Loyalty on Trial™_ and and can’t honestly figure out why she’s told him in the first place. But an indignant little voice calling to the version of herself that’s running from this is shouting that she knows *exactly* why, Dana Katherine.

And watching the way his leg is bouncing under the desk and the way he’s trying to hide his injury by withholding eye contact and pretending to read tells her she’s gotten _exactly_ the reaction she won’t admit she really wanted.

He told you he loved you for Christ’s sake, and yes his timing is shit (but when hasn’t it been, for Things Like This™) and when are you going to stop putting him on trial, too?


End file.
